Based at its iconic campus on Roosevelt Island in New York City, Cornell Tech has launched its Security, Trust and Safety (SETS) Initiative, leveraging Cornell’s world-leading faculty in computer security, digital safety, policy, ethics and law across both its New York City and Ithaca campuses, and its longstanding partnership with the Technion.
SETS will guide new education, research, engagement, and entrepreneurial activities aimed at making progress towards solving the critical problems that insecure digital technologies pose to societies around the world.
SETS will push the envelope on topics ranging from fundamentals of computer security and privacy to emerging threats to online security, including equipping industry players with a necessary understanding of both the causes and mitigation of generative AI. As a partner in Google’s Cyber NYC program, SETS is part of Cornell Tech’s commitment to improving New York City’s cybersecurity landscape.
The initiative will develop an innovative curriculum that will further strengthen the emerging field of trust and security as a topic of advanced study, while increasing the number of cybersecurity and privacy professionals at a time when there is a global talent shortage in the field.
The first director of SETS is Alexios Mantzarlis, who began his new role at Cornell Tech on May 4. Mantzarlis has more than a decade of leadership in online information quality, most recently serving as a principal on Google’s Trust and Safety Intelligence team, where he helped the company combat misinformation and designed adversarial testing for emerging AI risks. In his previous role as director of the International Fact-Checking Network, he led a groundbreaking partnership between fact checkers and Facebook and was a member of the European Union’s High-Level Group on Fake News and Online Disinformation.
“We face unprecedented challenges in securing our digital infrastructure, and we need innovative, interdisciplinary approaches to develop the talent and technologies we will need in the decades to come,” said Greg Morrissette, the Jack and Lila Nefcy Dean and Associate Dean at Cornell Tech. “We are pleased that under the leadership of Alexios and our faculty, the Security, Trust and Safety Initiative will be a place where thought leaders, students, researchers and practitioners can come together to make much-needed progress.”
